New icons, again…

What is Microsoft doing with the new Office icons? Are they released or aren’t they? Which machines get them, which don’t?

  • Home PC, Office 365 Home – new icons
  • Home laptop Office 365 Home – old icons
  • Wife’s laptop Office 365 Home (sub account) – new icons
  • Android work – new icons
  • Android private – new icons
  • Work laptop, Office 365 E5 – old icons
  • Work VM, Office 365 E5 – new icons
  • Work Terminal Server, Office 365 E5 (installed today) – old icons

That is 2 separate accounts, my Office 365 Home on 4 devices and my work Office 365 E5 account on 4 devices. It is the same throughout our organisation, some users have the new icons some the old, where they use multiple devices, one device will have the old icons, others the new icons. It makes it very confusing for some users, that they have different icons for the same applications on different devices.

Why don’t they roll it out per account or per tenant, instead of rolling a random number to decide if the current install gets the new or the old icons. And it isn’t even the age of the installation, as noted above, the Terminal Server was set up yesterday and I installed Office 365 on it this morning.

Conversation 13 comments

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    19 June, 2019 - 10:37 am

    <p>It's like that with every feature. I have no idea how Microsoft determines who gets what version of Office. I'm guessing they are using a random function in there somewhere.</p>

  • Paul Thurrott

    Premium Member
    19 June, 2019 - 10:38 am

    <p>You are looking for logic and reason where there is none. :)</p>

  • yoshi

    Premium Member
    19 June, 2019 - 12:38 pm

    <p>"You'll Scratch Your Head" should be Microsoft's slogan. There's not much that they do, in regards to rollouts, that make sense. They announced a Fluent update to OneDrive web back in December. Still don't have it. </p>

    • Kevin Costa

      19 June, 2019 - 12:57 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#436258">In reply to yoshi:</a></em></blockquote><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Back in 2017, t</span>hey announced other materials for Fluent, beyond Acrylic. Still waiting…</p><p><br></p><p>[jokeOn] I think they have to manufacture and mass produced this materials before putting on Windows [/jokeOn]</p>

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        20 June, 2019 - 12:40 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#436263">In reply to Kevin_Costa:</a></em></blockquote><p>Back in the 90s, they announced other GUIs for NT, other than Windows. Likewise, still waiting.</p>

  • Kevin Costa

    19 June, 2019 - 12:45 pm

    <p>The OneNote Android app was using the old style iconography yesterday for me. Today is using the new one. At least the other Office apps icons are updated too.</p><p><br></p><p>I want the new icons in Mail and Calendar on Windows 10.</p>

  • Winner

    19 June, 2019 - 7:40 pm

    <p>Inquiring minds need to know.</p>

  • jean

    20 June, 2019 - 2:43 am

    <p>even worse on Windows 10 Mobile: Excel New, OneNote New, Word Old, PowerPoint Old</p><p>and before you guys get there : I know W10M will soon be unsupported….</p>

  • andrewtechhelp

    Premium Member
    20 June, 2019 - 7:21 am

    <p>I also find it odd they that on the PC they updated the icons for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, but have left Publisher and Access <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">(plus Visio and Project for business customers)</span> with the old icons. I know Publisher and Access aren't exactly the most updated pieces of software these days (especially compared with Word, Excel etc.) but it seems weird to have an office suite that doesn't use the same styles of icons. I thought they were all meant to be part of one big family? Anyway, that's probably just my OCD tendencies kicking in.</p><p><br></p><p>Update: I've just checked a PC that has the Office Insider build on it and Publisher and Access have new icons there. So this will be fixed soon :D</p>

  • Polycrastinator

    20 June, 2019 - 9:08 am

    <p>My favorite is that i have new icons across everything.. except my desktop at home, which has the new Office icons but Teams has the old icon. Same license, same account, but this one app is different.</p>

  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    21 June, 2019 - 2:58 pm

    <p>So… the icons aren’t simply the ones that are included in the program resources? They’re dependent on other factors? Is that what’s going on here? WTF? What the actual fuck?</p><p><br></p><p>That would be as absurd as Microsoft hand coding dark mode into Explorer rather than using the theming engine that’s been there since Windows XP. They have all of these systems in place that have worked for years that now suddenly need to be replaced with crappy, overly complicated pseudo-replacements.</p><p><br></p><p>Long story short, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have some complicated crap in place to “deliver” the new icons. I sincerely hope it’s not the case but I wouldn’t be surprised. </p><p><br></p><p>Edit: Proofreading </p>

  • illuminated

    21 June, 2019 - 8:08 pm

    <p>Could be something with windows. I have couple of apps with generic white page icons. Proper icons just disappeared but I do not want to reinstall anything just to get some icons. The office icons… who cares really. Nothing better to do?</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      22 June, 2019 - 3:40 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#436840">In reply to illuminated:</a></em></blockquote><p>If you have hundreds of users used to clicking the same icon to start an application and it suddenly changes, or worse it changes on one machine and not another, you have increased support calls, because they can't find the icon they had yesterday, or on the other machine.</p><p>The you really care and you really want everyone to have the same icons on all machines!</p><p>Most of our users don't know much about computers, enough to click on the big blue box with an O to open Outlook, they often don't know it is called Outlook, it is "email".</p>

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